“Who he is now is a handsome guy in his 60s with a white beard, big but well kept, who refers to his wife as “my bride” after nine years. Hanging around their trailer one day, I see them handle each other with immense patience, even when their computer takes forever to load and they can’t find the files they’re looking for because they’ve been crappily cataloged and it’s not clear whose fault that is. Charlene has long, graying dark hair parted down the middle and super-serious eyes, which she has to lower to compose herself for a minute when I ask her, alone, if she saved Steve’s life. “He loves me a lot,” she answers. “I’ve never known love like this. He is…awesome.”

• This is a definition claim and a factual claim. The author saying”Who he is now is a handsome guy in his 60s…” describes Steve’s appearance making it a definition claim.
• Author stating ““He loves me a lot,” she answers. “I’ve never known love like this. He is…awesome.”” is making a factual claim of how Steve feels for Charlene. It could also be a casual claim.

“These most recent years, Steve is funnier—after all, he’s not just any Carson; his dad and Johnny were first cousins—but it’s not all good days. Sometimes, Charlene says, “I can feel him slipping down—it’s like this…vortex, this hole. And I try to grab him, like, ‘No! Don’t go down there!’ He can still get really depressed.” And hypervigilant. He doesn’t like living on Five Cent Ranch Road, which runs through a decidedly vulnerable valley.”

• This section is a factual claim. It asserts that Steve is funnier in recent years and gives an accurate depiction of the relationship he has with his father and Johnny.

“She saved my life,” Steve says of Charlene, without my asking. Of the soldiers coming home with PTSD now, he says, “You need time. You need time, and perspective.” Decades after his service, the VA rated Steve at 100 percent PTSD disabled, but he’s found his way to his version of a joyful life. Although, he qualifies, he saw guys get thrown around in explosions the way Caleb got thrown around in explosions, but he can’t say how their lives turned out in the long run because in his war, with that less-advanced gear, those guys usually died.

• ” the VA rated Steve at 100 percent PTSD disabled “. This is a factual claim because it is Steve’s status of having PTSD.
• The rest of this section is a comparative claim. It compares Steve’s experiences with experiences other have had. Steve also states that he is not sure how the lives of the other soldiers turned out, which also proves this to be a comparative claim.

Finally, Steve and Charlene find what they’re looking for on their computer: pictures of the land they bought nearby. Steve’s building an artist’s studio for Charlene on it, and eventually, hopefully, a house for the two of them. At the very top of a largely uninhabited hill, it will be hell—and sometimes impossible—to get down in winter because of the snow, but Steve doesn’t care, and wants to grow old with Charlene and die up there. At that elevation, with that vantage point, it’s one of the most defensible pieces of land in town.

• This section is an illustrative claim. It illustrates the land they bought and speaks on the elevation and the defensibility of the land.

In the Vines’ household in Alabama, at any unpredictable time of night, the nightmare starts in Iraq.

• This is an illustrative claim due to the fact that it illustrates the setting of the Vine’s household in Alabama.

The desert sun is blinding, invasive; all eyes blink roughly with under-eyelid dust. It smells like blood, even before the shot slices through the Humvee and strikes Caleb in the chest. The vehicle stops, the other four guys get out, hollering, the rest of the unit firing their weapons, that awful echo at the end of an M16 round. Someone’s yelling for the medic and an indiscernible string of noises seeps out of Caleb’s mouth while he’s dying. He’s dying. He’s bleeding warm and fast, and he’s not going to make it.

• “The desert sun is blinding, invasive; all eyes blink roughly with under-eyelid dust. It smells like blood, even before the shot slices through the Humvee and strikes Caleb in the chest. The vehicle stops, the other four guys get out, hollering, the rest of the unit firing their weapons, that awful echo at the end of an M16 round. Someone’s yelling for the medic and an indiscernible string of noises seeps out of Caleb’s mouth while he’s dying.” is an illustrative claim. It is setting the scenery of the desert and describes the smells and the shot that strikes the Humvee into Caleb’s chest.
• “He’s dying. He’s bleeding warm and fast, and he’s not going to make it.” is a factual claim. Caleb was shot in his chest and losing too much blood, it is a fact that Caleb is dying.

“Our brains can do such odd things,” Brannan says after she wakes up, shaky, the next morning. “Still don’t get how I can so vividly dream of somewhere I’ve never actually been.”

• this section is an evaluative claim. The author evaluates the power of the brain and vivid dreams and recognizes its abilities to show us things in our sleep.